


A Different Vessel

by taylorwrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bar, Confession, DeanCas - Freeform, Destiel - Freeform, Destiel Fluff, First Kiss, Fluffy, Jealous Castiel, Love, M/M, Protective Sam Winchester, Romance, True Love, angel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylorwrites/pseuds/taylorwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel and Dean go out to the bar, and the way Dean looks at the bartender makes Cas wonder... what if he had chosen a female vessel? The question he dares to ask is one that changes everything between him and his hunter, forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Different Vessel

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic came to mind when I was reading all of those “If Cas had been a girl—” arguments. 
> 
> It got a lot sadder/longer/feelsy-er than it should have. It's a bit clumsy and it's not my best work, but I kind of like it.

They were in some seedy bar a few miles down from the bunker, where Sam was sleeping off the exhaustion from their last hunt. In better times, Dean would have done the same. But he needed a drink, and Cas had trouble sleeping with the lights off, so the two of them wound up here. Every once in a while, Dean’s thumb would brush over the bruised skin of his knuckles (when the angel got angry, he found very few good ways to let that emotion out) with a touch so feather light, the new human had to wonder if it had even happened. They weren’t talking much. This had become so routine, they found they didn’t need to.

But this was a different day, which meant a different bartender. Usually, Cas paid them no mind. They paid Dean lots of mind, but he wasn’t often in the right state to reciprocate. Tonight, however…

This one had black hair and eyes so blue, Cas actually paused in thought and wondered if they were real. She had a body on her, too, even he noticed that. He could see Dean noticed, too, when she turned around his gaze traveled from dainty shoulders to her firm, perfectly curved behind. His gaze lingered, he smirked, and just as he took a sip of his drink, turned his eyes away, towards Cas. He was still smirking, but Cas… wasn’t.

"I want to go back to the bunker and check on Sam," he said suddenly, standing up and running his hand down his—Dean’s—shirt. He’d borrowed it last week and had yet to give it back. Maybe tonight he would.

"Wha—?" Dean leaned over in his seat, his attention now entirely focused on the male he’d come here with. Cas was only slightly pleased to note that miss angel-eyes looked disgruntled. "Why right now? Look, if anyone’s protective over Sammy, it’s me. And if I say he’s fine, Cas, you know he is."

Cas nodded, feeling that heat in his stomach intensify when Dean looked at him. He hated that look sometimes. Normally Cas was all for eye-contact and lingering stares, but tonight, he couldn’t keep them up. “Stay. Have another drunk with—her,” he very nearly spat. He was appalled at his own behavior, but it was like his mouth moved with a life of its own. And he hadn’t even touched any liquor.

Before Cas could get all the way to the door, Dean was there, his fingers wrapping around the other male’s forearm. Cas was stunned into stopping and into silence, eyes widening just a fraction of a bit. He had expected Dean to let him leave so he could flirt with the girl, like Cas assumed he so wanted to

"Alright, what the hell is your problem?" Dean demanded. Chin up, arms now crossed. Such a handsome, handsome weapon. Of course, Cas had never seen him as just a weapon. Especially not now, when his eyes looked so sincere.

"… she is my problem,” Cas answered with a faint sigh of defeat.

"Who? The—" Dean glanced back to look at the she in question, and when he was looking at Cas again, the befuddlement was clear as the freckles on his skin. “What’d she ever do to you?”

Cas paused, licking his lips and looking away. “Dean…” he began, his voice slow and unsteady. “Would things be different if I were in a female vessel?”

Would you look at me like that?

For a moment or two, Dean Winchester could honestly say he was stunned into silence, and that happened very rarely.

"Would… what be different?” This sounded like a question Dean didn’t even want to ask.

"Ev—everything," Cas replied, looking up at Dean and trying to set his expression into one that was stony. "Would you… feel the way you feel for that bartender? For… me?" He felt like a little boy asking if his crush liked him, or liked liked him. But he knew if times were simpler, the answer wouldn’t be so harsh.

"... what exactly are you asking me here?" His tone, gruff as ever, was one that Cas didn't like to hear.

Oh, maybe if the forlorn creature had seen the look on his face, he wouldn’t have bolted so quickly. But he was gone in a flash, tearing from the bar like he had hellhounds on his heels. He knew that was the wrong thing to say. He’d misread the little signs he thought he'd seen, and now he had to pay the price. By the time he’d gotten back tot the bunker and barged his way in, Sam was up, lounging at the table with his laptop before him. The blue light illuminated his eyes when Cas met them, and the smile on Sam’s face was almost sad to see.

"Hey, Cas, what’s—" he’d probably meant to say up, but changed that when he saw the expression on Cas’s face, “—wrong?”

Shuffling awkwardly where he stood, Cas shrugged his shoulders. “I asked Dean if he would feel differently towards me if I had chosen a female vessel instead of Jimmy Novak’s.” A pause, as he took in Sam’s scrutinizing gaze. “It did not end pleasantly.”

Sam stood up, immediately walking over to place his hand on the shorter man’s shoulders. “Cas, buddy, I’m… look, I’m sorry. Honestly? I… I thought Dean felt… a certain way about you, but I wasn’t sure—”

"Oh, I am," Cas muttered bitterly. "He looks at… at bartenders and waitresses like he wants to swallow them whole."

Sam’s loud laugh wasn’t what Cas expected, and honestly? He was sort of offended. “Cas—that’s lust. That’s just… want, for sex. And then there’s the way… the way you look at people you care about it. When you look at ‘em with l—”

The door to the bunker crashed open, and the stomping of Dean’s boots could be heard. When he walked in looking angry and sweaty and irked, Cas felt some of that want stirring inside of his chest. “We need to talk,” he demanded, then cut a pointed look towards Sam.

"No," Cas said, moving to stand before the man… who, um, was a bit too tall to be hidden. "What you say before me, you can say in front of Sam, as well." Protecting his new ally, naturally.

It took a few seconds for that to become comfortable for Dean, but when it was, the male ran a hand through his hair and huffed. “Look, man, I don’t know what happened back there, but you and I need to have a mano-y-mano chat about it. You’re… I mean, that whole thing was just…” he turned to Sam, flinging his hand through the air. “He got mad because of the way I was looking at a bartender!” His gaze turned back towards Cas’s, but neither’s stuck for long. “You have no right to… to act like—”

Sam coughed, raised a hand. “If I may?”

“No,” Dean hissed.

"Okay, well," Sam smirked. "First of all, it’s mano-a-mano. And Cas, what he’s trying to say is that you don’t notice it, but he looks at you like that, too. Hell, he looks at you with that other thing I was talking about. Remember?”

And Cas did. But he didn’t understand.

"Sammy, go to your room," Dean barked the order out like a drill sergeant.

"I’m not twelve anymore, Dean."

“I'm begging you, man, just give us a second to talk this out.”

Finally, with a nod from Cas, Sam acquiesced. With the hunter and his once-angel finally standing mano-a-mano, there was an awkward silence. Cas filled it pathetically with, “Dean, I am sorry about what I said. I didn’t—”

"I love you."

"… you?" It knocked the breath out of him, even more than Dean’s hard, jade-green stare. The kind that cut your heart into pieces.

"It’s what I meant to tell you that time Naomi was working her… weird angel mumbo-jumbo on you. What I mean to tell you every fucking time we go to some bar. And I forget and I push it back because I-I-I’m not good with this stuff, Cas, god-damn it. And now you’re mad and I’m just—I don’t know. S’pose it was time to fucking say it.”

For a while, neither of them spoke again. Cas wanted to, but how did he top that? How did he tell Dean he felt the same without feeling like an idiot in comparison?

"That’s all I had to say," Dean grumbled, moving to push past Cas and go to his room. But the clash of their shoulders was all Cas needed to grab onto Dean’s shirt and pull him back, aiming his lips for a kiss that awakened a volcano within him despite its sweet clumsiness. Dean let himself choke out a gasp before responding, his hands shakily grabbing Cas’s face to pull him closer, closer, closer—.

"Dean, I cannot hold my breath as long as I used to," Cas murmured, turning his lips away to catch a breath of air. Dean coughed and stepped back, nodding.

"So... you've--you've had feelings for males before? Gender is not a factor for you?"

Dean struggled with his words for a bit--damned near sputtered--before finally muttering, "I, ah--no, Cas. It is a... a factor. I'm not gonna go movin' on to staring at other dudes asses or anything like that, it's just--it has nothing to do with guys, alright, let's leave it at that?"

But Cas was confused, wanting more than what was being given to him. "I simply don't understand."

Dean's fingers, rough and calloused, splayed onto his collar to pull the blue-eyed male just a bit closer. "'course not. I don't understand it myself." He chuckled, cocked his head to the side, and just stared. "It's not other guys, Cas, it's you. It's always been you. Hell, you could be in any vessel, and I'd still feel... I'd still feel like this."

Cas swallowed, slowly understanding what the other male meant. "You know, I do love you as well, Dean." He leaned forward on a whim to gently kiss him, nervousness shaking his form. They were both still so clumsy, getting used to the feel of skin on skin and their lips pressed together. But it was nice, real nice, and when they pulled apart again, Dean realized what Cas had said, and what all of this meant.

Trying to deter from the chick-flick moment, he remarked, “I sure do have a type, don’t I?”

For the longest time, that was a joke Castiel could not understand.


End file.
